WORKSHOP | Riverine Listening: for the rhythms of recovery and restoration

by Blanc Sceol (Stephen Shiell & Hannah White)

October 26th | 6-9pm

Drawing on their relationship with the Channelsea river (Stratford, London) as artists and co-directors of a housing and conservation cooperative, Blanc Sceol will facilitate a sensory space of shared awareness and sound, a space beyond words to explore our bodies as recovering landscapes and remember the interconnectedness of riverine ecosystems and our own inner waters.

Blanc Sceol are an artist duo with a socially engaged practice that has emerged & expanded throughout our years of working together across performance, composition, participatory actions, deep listening facilitation, somatic & ritual gatherings. Our compositions, interventions and performances express our experience of place, anchored in what is found in a landscape but re-imagined into new territories. Our work has been described as ‘transcendent’ ‘other-worldly’ & ‘ethereal’, reflecting our attempts to expand ourselves, through listening & sound, beyond our physical limits & to extend this personal/performance practice into the collective. We have been working with the Channelsea river in Stratford, Newham since 2018, establishing ecology focused creative experiences via the foundation of and participation in Surge Cooperative, a non-profit coop working for water-space improvements & access, affordable moorings, and advocating for river rights.

‘On the Wolf’s Trail’ Research program curated and mentored by Margarida Mendes

‘On the Wolf’s Trail’ is a programme of sensory practices and lectures focused on decolonial ecology and restorative justice that explores pedagogical formats to debate forms of collective repair, restoration, resilience, and healing. Along four years, sessions will be led by practitioners from the fields of arts, environmental humanities, and post-colonial studies, and embrace topics such as mutualism and reciprocity, working towards the repair ancestral relations.